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14 October 2013

Winner: COMET Advisory, with the Tri-Borough FM Project Team

Runner up: BAE Systems, The Bowland Centre

 

When three London councils were faced with a spending review indicating an overall 14 per cent reduction in government funding, the decision to work together achieved the tricky dual outcome of reducing costs and improving standards.

COMET Advisory played a strategic role in helping the three councils – The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster City Council and London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham – collaborate to streamline FM services and deliver savings.

But this major project not only nailed its key objectives of reducing costs and overheads, improving compliance and flexibility of service and driving greater consistency, but it also provided professional development for all tri-borough teams and stakeholder parties.

COMET led a competitive dialogue (CD) during the procurement process to help the project team develop a solution with contractors.

A total CD process cost of £2m produced £90-100m of savings, greatly in excess of the £20m target. But the project didn’t only succeed in powerful ROI stats. A centralised, consistent delivery model, learning and development programmes to upskill the service delivery team, and keeping staff engaged, informed and motivated throughout the change process all resulted in FM excellence.

The participation of all parties throughout the process proved key to what is a shining example of authorities tackling government reforms positively – creating new partnerships and using them as a vehicle for innovation, improvement and indeed transformation.

Much of this can be attributed to the dynamic CD environment driven by COME T. The BIFM judges noted in particular how the project presented a technically complex challenge in bringing on board multiple stakeholders in three large local authorities. They added that they were “extremely impressed with the approach to consensus” and that “the political governance structures in each of the organisations had ... fully bought in to the ultimate FM solution”.

 

09 September 2013

COMET make the finals of both the Leading FM industry Awards – PFM and BIFM 2013

The PFM Awards, celebrating its 20th year, is a prestigious FM event of the year. It recognises the importance of partnership as well as the talents of leading contributors in the Facilities Management sector. COMET, in partnership with Tri-Borough (Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham and Westminster Borough Councils), have been selected as a finalists in the category Partners in FM – SME Organisations. The winners will be announced at the awards dinner on 6th November.

The BIFM Award winners will be announced at The Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London on 14 October. COMET are delighted to have been shortlisted to the top 3 nationally in the category FM Excellence in a Major Project.

Commenting on the finalists, Chairman of the Judges, Oliver Jones said "Once again we have been delighted to receive a very high number of entries for the 2013 Awards. It has also been very encouraging to see that these have come from all sectors of the FM industry: leading brand names; fast growing, innovative new entrants and outstanding individual teams and people. The task for the judges was tough but we are delighted that the finalists and winners have now been identified, underlining the strength and depth that we enjoy in the UK in facilities management."

It is significant to the COMET team to have been recognised for the cutting edge transformative TFM contract they have enabled for Tri-Borough. For further information about the COMET approach to Competitive Dialogue and shared services innovation, please contact karen@cometadvice.com